www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology vespers in Byz Cath churches

How common is it for Byzantine Catholic (Ruthenian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Melkite) churches to have Sat. evening vespers throughout the year? Around here, the only way to go to vespers is at an Orthodox church.

Also, do many of these churches have Matins/Orthros?

Porter

Porter, while it is much more common than 10 or 20 years ago, it is still not very common for Greek Catholic parishes to have regular Vespers and/or Matins. Many still feel the need to have a Sat. evening Divine Liturgy which is certainly not harmonious with the received tradition.

What the actual percentage of parishes that have either Vespers or Matins per jurisdiction has not been looked at "officially" as a statistical report, it would be interesting to find out.

And with regards to having Vespers or Matins, it seems very generally that churches of the Slavic tradition tend more towards Sat. night Great Vespers and those of the Greek tradition tend more towards celebrating Orthros.

My parish has Saturday vespers.

We only started it this past year, the public isn't used to it so attendence is way off. I am glad my parish went forward with it, because I was going to start attending another church's vespers, I had every intention of doing so when Father suddenly started vespers at our church. I know he was kicking the idea around for a while, I'm glad he decided to make the commitment.

We have Matins before Sunday Liturgy.

Michael

Last night I went to Vespers at the local OCA mission parish. Father and I were the only ones there until the cantor showed up about 10 minutes late. The cantor and I were the only two in the nave during Vespers. I'm glad I went even if it was not well attended.

St. Elias, outside of Toronto, has both Great Vespers and Sunday Matins (7 pm & 8 am respectively):

http://www.saintelias.com/

http://www.saintelias.com/Vespers_elia/Vespers_elia.html

Other UGCC's in the the Toronto area are: Holy Eucharist, St. Nicholas, Dormition. Maybe more...

In Winnipeg, there are 4 UGCC's that have Great Vespers. One even does the Vigil!

Herb

V&O's in Chicago has Sat. evening Vespers as well. Sad to say it is not very well attended, but we cantor-types love the service.

Yours,

hal

Our bishop (Parma, Ruthenian) has expressed a desire that the services be restored in our parishes. So yesterday we took our first whack at an abbreviated Matins service. We'll be doing it once a month for now, and my big priority before August (our July service is part of a big eparchial shindig, and totally set in stone) is to take the book we were given and make it more user friendly.

Oh, and to get some kind of handle on Irmos tones...

Dunno how many other parishes are acting on the bishop's stated desire.


Sharon

Dear Herb,

I've seen the website for Saint Elias before and it is excellent!
It makes you feel like "Wow, wouldn't you like to be there!". I'm sure the parish is truly blessed.

Bill, I can assure you that being there is no comparison to the pictures which don't do justice to the beauty of services at St. Elias.

Twenty years ago the only church in our area which had Vespers or Vigil was the OCA, and was where many of us learned the services. And similarly the only place that had Orthros on Sunday Morning was the Greek parish. Now even amongst the Orthodox it is more common to see Vespers and Matins in parishes.

In our parish we started Vespers with myself cantoring, the priest and my sons serving, with one or two others coming. Now we can get 10-15 on occasion. We have a single reader chant the Ninth Hour as people are coming in and preparing for Vespers, and after Vespers we similarly have a reader[s] chant Small Compline with a Canon to the Theotokos while the priest hears Confessions.

In another fledgling mission which is being developed in the area, we are starting with Vespers as the community service, and will add Matins and then the Divine Liturgy. We can regularly get 10-20 there for Vespers, even though it is in someone's house.

Vespers is much more straightforward and simple for a parish that is starting to add the Sunday cycle of services. Matins is much more complicated, and doesn't really lend itself well to abbreviation, as it is hard to abbreviate something of that beauty and majesty. There are ways to do it tastefully, such as following St. John Maximovich's suggestions for a cyclic reading of the Kathismata at Matins. Personally I would rather see the Little Hours sung well and in their entirety before the Divine Liturgy than a very hybridized and abbreviated Matins.

But if you have a priest and core group who is willing to support it, go for it. Often if a priest is presented with a certain level of interest, it can be possible.

Someone mentioned the Irmos tones, they are in the Irmologion, but in Slavonic. The OCA has done a great job transposing many of those lesser and greater Znamenny melodies into English. An English Ruthenian version of the Irmologion would be nice for those BCC parishes who are picking up Matins and want to sing the appropriate melodies according to the Uniontown Matins translations. Perhaps a future project for the lads in Pittsburgh.

The 'lads in Pittburgh' have been working on it already, thank you very much!

The Metropolitan Cantor Institute, through the hard work of J. Michael Thompson and a number of other dedicated folks, has been putting out materials with completely notated music (Ruthenian chant from Bokshaj and other sources) for Matins and Vespers on Sundays and feast days since the beginning of Great Lent. Vespers has been celebrated as part of the Saturday cantor's school in Pittsburgh for several years now, and the 2002 provisional book with complete Sunday Vespers in all eight tones was just replaced with a newer draft with some corrections and improvements The Pittsburgh metropolia has a draft book with notated music for the ordinary parts of Matins (including the 11-week stolp cycle), and tones 1-8 for Matins are being distributed weekly for review over this summer.

As far as a Ruthenian Irmologion - I set the eight resurrectional canons (Uniontown text, music from Bokshaj and Malinic, and from Ratsin's expansion of the same) back in 1997/1998, and had help from both Byzantine Catholic and Carpatho-Russian Orthodox cantors in improving them; we were fortunate enough to receive both Metropolitan Judson's (of Pittsburgh) and Metropolitan Nicholas' (of Johnstown) blessings for their use as well. Since then, most of the festal canons have been set, and we now have about 90% of the Bokshaj Prostopinije available in English, at least in draft form.

Through the work of the Cantor Institute, quite a number of cantors from the Pittsburgh metropolia now have experience with Great Vespers, and I'm really hoping to see Vespers and Matins celebrated with much more frequency in our churches. I would like to send a large public THANK YOU to J. Michael Thompson, as well as tireless scribe Gail Gillespie, for a great deal of behind-the-scenes work over the last couple of years. Many God grant them many years!

Jeff Mierzejewski
Cantor, Ss. Peter and Paul Byzantine Catholic Church
Endicott, NY

Jeff, perhaps you can let everyone know how they can get a copy of your settings of Bokshaj of the resurrectional canons. Are those using the Uniontown translations? Also, any time frame on the complete English translation of Bokshaj? I have found the L'viv Irmologion to be generally more complete in its collection of melodies than Bokshaj.

The next few years should be exciting as all of these various gems of hymnography are made available.

My only concern is that there are many enclaves of people working on this independently, with no real integration and collaboration. While much work has already been done by the BCC, ACROD, OCA, UGCC, UOC, etc. there are even various versions and settings already extant within the BCC.

Father Peter Galadza several years ago organized and convened a working conference on English Divine Liturgy texts. Something along those lines for English Greek Catholic musical settings would be of interest to many. I think the voices of the cantors should be heard (pun intended ) in a group setting with those who are attempting to establish "standard" texts which those same cantors will have to use.

Holy Transfiguration in McLean VA has Vespers and Matins. I have only been there a few times, but they seem to have it down really well, with a nice size choir and/or cantor doing a beautiful job. Tammy

Yes, a big applause and thank you to "the lads" who are working on the music for Matins and Vespers.

I have the Matins and Vespers books from Lent and use them as my basic book now with the propers being extra. I hope and PRAY there are no glitches and that there will be a real book printed at the end of 2004 or beginning of 2005.

Yes, we live in historic times in our American Church.

Michael Hilko (an Orthodox musicologist of blessed memory) did an excellent book - entirely in English - of Saturday Vespers and Sunday Orthros (which he unfortunately termed "Matins") set to simple Bakhmetev four-part music. If you can lay your hands on one, you'll find it well worth having.
Father Soroka (OCA) has done some useful pocket-sized manuals for Vespers and Orthros (one manual each) with similar music in 3-part harmony.
For those who would like better music, Saint Vladimir's Seminary has published a large-format book for Vespers, with a good selection of settings for the various pieces; they may also have done Orthros. But be careful; this does require good singers.
The Eparchy of Newton has done quite a lot in Byzantine chant for Vespers and Orthros, but has not quite published it - it's available in samizdat and capies pass from hand to hand.
The Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese published a good deal of Vespers and Orthros music done by Father Basil Kazan; that was 20 or 30 years ago but it's probably still available.
Father John vol Holzhausen and Father Michael Gelsinger did a useful draft of a Sunday Octoechos with musical notation (western notation, that is), which was printed in a small press run by the John XXIII Center at Fordham. Challenging but enjoyable

Incognitus

David Drillock of St. Vlad's has done a superb job setting the OCA texts to music. Many years as he nears retirement!

I would also mention Mark Bailey. I especially like his setting of Blessed is the Man. And then there's Glagolev...